From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation

by Umberto Eco

  It is true, as Curtius (1948: chs. XI and XII) clearly demonstrates, that it was on the basis of this same distinction between the poet and the theologian, and of certain affirmations made by Aristotle concerning the first poet-theologians, that protohumanists like Albertino Mussato began to adumbrate a notion of the revelatory role of poetry; but by then we will have abandoned the confines of Scholasticism and its inflexible epistemology. In the eyes of which, given its defectus veritatis, to interpret the modus poeticus as a perceptio confusa of the Baumgartian type would be, to say the least, a stretch.

  Maritain (1938a–b), in contrast, goes back to Thomas’s own writings in order to identify the modus poeticus, precisely because of its imprecise and representative nature, as knowledge by “affective connaturality with reality” (“connaturalité affective à la réalité”), a knowledge that is nonconceptualizable, inasmuch as it awakens within itself the creative profundities of the subject. Poetic knowledge is “inseparable from the productivity of the spirit” (“inséparable de la productivité de l’esprit”) (1938a: 95–96).

  What can the expressive and communicative instrument of this knowledge “by affective connaturality” be? It is the poetic symbol, which is a sign-image, something sensible that signifies its object by way of an analogy between sign and object, and therefore a sign, which, over and above its semantic effectiveness, obtains a practical result (by communicating an order, an appeal) by means of suggestion—an operation that Maritain does not hesitate to define as “magical” (1938a: 299 et seq.).

  Nevertheless, no doubt because he did not believe that Thomas’s own texts would support this interpretation, Maritain seeks confirmation in a Scholastic of the Counter-Reformation, to be specific, in John of Saint Thomas (1589–1644; aka John Poinsot, hereinafter “John”).

  Now, John’s linguistic theory is a theory of philosophical language and he does not have the slightest interest in the possibilities of poetic language. The linguistic expression or term is what the proposition can be reduced to, as occurs in the case of the subject and the predicate; the term is both vox and signum, both mental and written, and it is ex quo simplex conficitur propositio (“that out of which a simple proposition is made”); it is a vox significativa (and therefore is not meaningless, unlike, for instance, the sound blitiri); and it is such ad placitum, that is, by stipulation or convention. Meaningful words (voces significativae) that have not been agreed upon, such as moans and groans, are excluded.12

  Maritain, for his part, endeavors to find allusions to the “symbolic” value of images in certain citations from John (such as “ratio imaginis consistit in hoc quod procedat ab alio ut a principio et in similitudinem ejus, ut docet S. Thomas” (“the rationale of an image, therefore, consists in this, that it proceeds from another as from a principle and in a similitude or likeness of that other, as Saint Thomas teaches”) (Deely 1985: 219). While it is true that Thomas states (in Summa Theologiae I, 35) that “species, prout ponitur ab Hilario in definitione imaginis, importat formam deductam in aliquo ab alio” (“the term species, as Hillary claims in his definition of the image, implies a form in one thing derived from another”), what he is talking about is the more traditional definition of the image as bound to the object by a relationship of likeness, not by convention, and this reading does not lend itself to a “symbolist” interpretation. Maritain, on the other hand, makes it the basis for a definition of the poetic symbol as a sign-image endowed with an analogical and ambiguous (or polysemic) relationship with the signatum. Thomas was not unaware of the existence of such sign-images capable of standing in a vaguely ambiguous position vis-à-vis the signatum; but he saw them as being the kind of visions that appear to prophets, announcing the fact, for instance, that there will be seven years of plenty by showing seven full ears of corn. This would be a purely poetic proceeding, and here again Thomas implies that it is inferior; so much so that he considers more valid and reliable those prophecies in which, instead of images, we have words, far less equivocal signs, and more desirable in a circumstance as delicate as that of the reception of the divine message.13

  Saying, however, that in prophecy we encounter “poetic” procedures does not mean that prophecy and poetic procedures are one and the same thing.

  Let us grant then, in order to get this false issue out of the way, that there does exist, in the authors to whom Maritain refers, a sign-image based on a relationship of analogy—and the fact that it is somewhat played down is surely not all that important, seeing that, here and elsewhere, what is at stake, as we have seen, is more a question of theology than one of aesthetics. Furthermore, the most reliable communicative vehicles are to be preferred, those that are, in other words, less “poetically” ambiguous. However, once the existence of sign-images had been recognized (as the entire allegorical tradition is there to attest), medieval thinkers invariably made every attempt to conventionalize them as much as they could, through their repertories of symbols, attributing a single meaning to every image (or at most a choice amongst four). If there are more—if, for example, in certain bestiaries, the lion may signify both Christ and the Devil—this is because of the overlapping of traditional associations. But the task of medieval hermeneutics, however much Maritain, as a reader of Baudelaire, would have preferred it, is not to cultivate a fruitful ambiguity, fraught with manifold suggestions, but on the contrary to identify as expeditiously as possible a definite meaning valid for the context at hand (which is usually scriptural).

  The only way Maritain could have defended his position was by placing himself clearly outside the medieval tradition and declaring that modern man had turned the situation on its head. Incapable of choosing between the role of modern symbolist and that of ancient allegorist, on the one hand he throws a veil of ambiguity over his medieval sources, while on the other he undermines the comprehension of his personal proposals by making them sound like superannuated ruminations on Thomistic positions, whereas, if the truth were known, they are in reality assertions typical of contemporary aesthetics. It is not easy to keep one foot in Montparnasse and the other in the Street of Straw (Vicus Straminis = Ruelle au Fouarre). But this untenable ubiquity is the very essence of Maritain’s aesthetic. It explains its fascination, however outmoded today, as well as the reason why it was so short-lived.

  8.5. Creative Intuition vs. Agent Intellect

  And so we come at last to a book like Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (1953), meditated and composed in an English-speaking context by a more mature Maritain, enriched by his intense experience as a reader of contemporary poetic texts and partially weaned from his strict deference to the texts of the Middle Ages.14

  Here Maritain no longer presents himself as an interpreter of Saint Thomas but as an autonomous thinker, developing the concept of poetry as revelation already outlined in his previous essays.

  By Poetry I mean … that intercommunication between the inner being of things and the inner being of the human Self which is a kind of divination. (3)

  In other words, poetry obliges us to consider the intellect both in its secret well-springs inside the human soul and as functioning in a nonrational (I do not say antirational) or nonlogical way. (4)

  The integral conclusion must, therefore, it seems to me, be set forth as follows: On the one hand, as we have seen apropos of Oriental art, when art only intent on Things succeeds in revealing Things and their hidden meanings, it does also reveal obscurely, despite itself, the creative subjectivity of the artist.… On the other hand, when art primarily intent on the artist’s Self succeeds in revealing creative subjectivity, it does also reveal obscurely Things and their hidden aspects and meanings—and with greater power of penetration indeed, I mean into the depths of this Corporeal Being itself and this Nature that our hands touch.… Our descriptive and inductive inquiry suggests that at the root of the creative act there must be a quite particular intellectual process, without parallel in logical reason, through which Things and the Self are grasped together by mean
s of a kind of experience or knowledge which has no conceptual expression and is expressed only in the artist’s work. (33–34)15

  Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that this theory of poetic knowledge is patently in conflict with the medieval conception of art as recta ratio factibilium (“right judgment regarding things to be made”), as an intellectual creation, that is, which adheres to certain rules, Maritain, revealing an unsuspected acrobatic talent, endeavors to demonstrate that his position is not in conflict with Thomistic theory. Although, for the Middle Ages, art was a virtue of the practical intellect, for Maritain the set of rules by which the intellect operates are not rules ossified into a canon that antedates the creation of the work. This is where the notion of “creative intuition” comes in, superimposing itself on the canonical rules of making and breathing new life into them by virtue of an act that proceeds from the depths of the spirit.

  There is no need to stress the fact that it is precisely this concept of an intuitive moment permeating the action and superimposing itself on the rules that is nowhere to be found in Thomas’s aesthetics. Maritain seems to be affirming that the idea of creative intuition is peculiar to contemporary and modern poetics; and yet he reintroduces the intuitive moment in the context of classical philosophy when he states that all reasoning, deductive and syllogistic, is based in reality on an intuitive principle, on the existence, that is, of first principles that are not deduced but seen. The classical intuition of first principles, however, was still a modality of reason, the very law of its functioning; whereas the poetic intuition of the Moderns is an insight of the imagination: not a logical operation (which discovers) but the final effect of an imaginative operation (which creates).

  Maritain does not appear sensitive to this difference. Indeed he maintains that there is no substantial difference between poetry and intellect, both are ascribable to the “same blood.” The madness of the Surrealists and Plato’s poetic mania, along with the profound intuition of principles (to say nothing of the mystical consciousness that ultimately constitutes the final step in any explicative process of being, as Maritain never tired of insisting), all have their common root in the spiritual makeup of mankind:

  My contention, then, is that everything depends, in the issue we are discussing, on the recognition of the existence of a spiritual unconscious, or rather, preconscious, of which Plato and the ancient wise men were well aware, and the disregard of which in favor of the Freudian unconscious alone is a sign of the dullness of our times. There are two kinds of unconscious, two great domains of psychological activity screened from the grasp of consciousness: the preconscious of the spirit in its living springs, and the unconscious of blood and flesh, instincts, tendencies, complexes, repressed images and desires, traumatic memories, as constituting a closed or autonomous dynamic whole. I would like to designate the first kind of unconscious by the name of spiritual or, for the sake of Plato, musical unconscious or preconscious; and the second by the name of automatic unconscious or deaf unconscious—deaf to the intellect, and structured into a world of its own apart from the intellect; we might also say, in quite a general sense, leaving aside any particular theory, Freudian unconscious. These two kinds of unconscious life are at work at the same time; in concrete existence their respective impacts on conscious activity ordinarily interfere or intermingle in a greater or less degree.… But they are essentially distinct and thoroughly different in nature. (91–92)

  It is enough to think of the ordinary and everyday functioning of intellect, in so far as intellect is really in activity, and of the way in which ideas arise in our minds, and every genuine intellectual grasping, or every new discovery, is brought about; it is enough to think of the way in which our free decisions, when they are really free, are made, especially those decisions which commit our entire life—to realize that there exists a deep nonconscious world of activity, for the intellect and the will, from which the acts and fruits of human consciousness and the clear perceptions of the mind emerge, and that the universe of concepts, logical connections, rational discursus and rational deliberation, in which the activity of the intellect takes definite form and shape, is preceded by the hidden workings of an immense and primal preconscious life. Such a life develops in night, but in a night which is translucid and fertile, and resembles that primeval diffused light which was created first, before God made, as Genesis puts it, “lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night” so as to be “for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.” (93–94)

  If we are willing to forget the desperate syncretism of Maritain’s ploy and prepared to understand this “creative intuition” in terms of modern and contemporary aesthetics, his argument appears, if not acceptable, at least consistent.

  What he is saying is that the foundation of a spiritual preconscious different from the unconscious of psychology is the foundation of a primum that is both psychological and ontological, a sort of archetypal Realm of the Mothers from which objective reality and personal spiritual activity itself both draw their nourishment. In this way we can understand poetic knowledge to be an affective connaturality that puts us into contact with the secret life of being itself, and whose principal organ is none other than intuition, prelogical imaginative activity, the only activity capable of grasping a deep reality that precedes logical distinctions and the duality of thought and being.

  This is not an unheard-of philosophical position, and we cannot deny Maritain the right to espouse it. But Maritain insists on making Thomas’s doctrine of the intellect the foundation of this conception.

  Over and above the conscious rational arguments by means of which reason makes itself manifest, he tells us, there exist the very springs of creativity and love “hidden in the primordial translucid night of the intimate vitality of the soul” (94). Now, he continues: “the Schoolmen were not interested in working out any theory about the unconscious life of the soul” (and we are grateful to him for this admission) “yet their doctrines implied its existence” (96).

  To declare that in a given philosophical system a certain problematic issue is not openly mooted, but that its constituent elements, and to some extent its solution, emerge from the system’s very framework, is a legitimate position. A system is there to be interpreted, not only by contemporaries but also by posterity, and, since it claims to state truths about the world, it must be ready for any further developments in our knowledge of the world that might follow in its wake. But were the premises of this doctrine contained in Scholastic thought?

  Maritain takes into consideration the Aristotelian notion of the agent intellect as inherited and elaborated upon by Thomas. The agent intellect engages in a process of intellectual abstraction performed on the contents of a possible intellect, which in and of itself would not be capable of a similar process of abstraction (given that it receives passively only what is presented to it by the senses). Maritain clearly embraces Thomas’s solution, which is opposed to Arabic attempts to locate the agent intellect somewhere outside of the individual soul.

  But, in the Thomistic doctrine of the agent intellect, there is no suggestion of any sort of unconscious activity. We could at best speak of a lightning-fast operation, instinctive perhaps, but of which we are fully conscious at the moment we avail ourselves of it, at the moment, that is, when we recognize the universal form in the individual experience.

  In fact, in the following comment the problem of the unconscious does not seem to arise (we might also say that Maritain is honest enough, in paraphrasing Thomas’s position, not to falsify its terms):

  Thus, at a first step, the intelligible content present in the images, and which, in the images, was only intelligible in potency (or capable of being made capable of becoming an object of intellectual vision), is made intelligible in act in a spiritual form (specie impressa, impressed pattern), let us say, in an intelligible germ, which is received from the images by the intellect, under the activation of the Illuminating Intellect. But this is not yet e
nough for the attaining of knowledge. It is necessary that the intelligible content drawn from the images should be not only intelligible in act, or capable of becoming an object of intellectual vision, but intellected in act, or actually become an object of intellectual vision. Then it is the intellect itself, which, having been impregnated by the impressed pattern or intelligible germ, vitally produces—always under the activation of the Illuminating Intellect—an inner fruit, a final and more fully determined spiritual form (species expressa), the concept, in which the content drawn from the images is brought to the very same state of spirituality-in-act in which the intellect-in-act is, and in which this now perfectly spiritualized content is seen, is actually an object of intellectual vision. (97–98)

  Here, Maritain’s seductive language is already beginning to color, with a kind of “imaginative efficacy,” what is, in Thomas’s version, one of the simplest procedures of the human intellect.

  From all of the various texts in which Thomas expounds his doctrine of the intellect,16 we may derive the following cognitive moments: